That was the half-truth he always used to convince himself he’d done the right thing in leaving her. She’d taken care of him in the early days. Or tried, when he’d let her. She’d been patient and kind. But he’d given up. Backed away. He hadn’t left her any choice other than to accept what he’d done—which was to leave.
“After she waited all those years for you, you’re not going to try and get her back? Because, next to my Ellie, Sloane is probably the best woman I’ve ever known. I can’t believe you can simply walk away from her the way you did and never look back.”
“Oh, I look back—but all I can see are regrets. Mine. Hers. I can’t go back, Matt. She deserves better than that. Better than me.”
“And she’s told you that?”
No, she had not. But it was what he’d known almost from his first day home.
“I was beating her down. You could see it in her. Day by day, piece by piece, I was taking everything she had away from her. I mean, she’s a brilliant heart surgeon, and such a good person, but I was sucking the life out of her and I hated that. But for Sloane it was like the poet Poe said in his Annabelle Lee: ‘And this maiden she lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by me.’ That’s all she wanted, Matt. To love me and have me love her back. But it wasn’t in me anymore.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Me too—in more ways than I probably even know.”
And in so many ways that he did know. Ways that kept him awake at night. Ways that reduced him to tears when his thoughts wouldn’t be shut off.
“So, like I said, she’s better off without me.”
“And you? Are you better off without her?”
“It doesn’t matter, as long as she’s not part of my life anymore.”
“What is your life, Carter? Other than the job I’m giving you here, what is your life?”
“Damned if I know. But when I figure it out, you’ll be the first to know.”
“That bad?” Matt asked.
“That bad,” he said in earnest. “Hopefully getting better, though.”
“Because of your bear rescue program?”
Carter smiled. “Because of what I hope I can do to make my little part of the program successful.”
“Well, that’s the attitude I’m looking for.” Matt extended his hand across the table to Carter. “So, welcome to Forgeburn’s only medical practice.”
Carter took Matt’s hand, wondering if this was too much, too soon. He was still on a high from the success he’d seen in the first part of his recovery program, but would that be enough to the job that needed to be done here?
For a while he’d ridden the crest of the self-confidence wave, but now he was underneath it. That was PTSD, though, wasn’t it? Always trying to rob you of yourself. Always chipping away at the bits and pieces that seemed to be moving forward.
There was a time when his normal reaction would have been to say, I’ve got this. Now, though, he wasn’t sure what he had—and that was what scared him. Before PTSD, nothing ever had. Now, almost everything did.
But this was the opportunity he needed. So it was time to put one foot forward and hope he could stay there for a while.
“When do you want me to start?”
* * *
Sloane Manning looked at the text messages on her phone, then at her phone messages. Still nothing. She’d been trying to call Carter for weeks. At least once a day. Sometimes twice. Not that there was much to say at this point. But she was concerned. Six years of her life had gone into that man—most of it waiting while he was in the military—and it wasn’t easy to detach herself from the life she’d expected to have by now.
After her father had dismissed Carter from his job at the hospital he’d disappeared. Hadn’t packed anything to speak of. Hadn’t said goodbye or even left a note other than a vague text message. The only thing that had told her Carter was gone was that their apartment—her apartment—seemed so hollow and cold now. She hated being there. Hated being by herself there. Because it was their home, not hers.
Which was why she was moving back in with her dad when she got back from this two-week vacation. She’d waited long enough for Carter to make a move. But after three months it was clear he wasn’t going to do that. In fact she didn’t even know where he was. He’d been in Vegas for a while, but after that...
So here she was at the airport, ready to board a plane to one of the places she and Carter had always talked about. She was ready to give herself some good, hard physical licks in the canyons and the desert. Ready to start over on her own.
“Dr. Sloane Manning,” the attendant at the desk called over the loudspeaker. “Last call for Dr. Sloane Manning.”
Hearing her name startled her out of her thoughts, and almost in a panic she grabbed up her carry-on bag and ran toward the check-in before the loading gate shut.
“Sorry about that,” she said to the attendant. “I was...”
What? Daydreaming about a romance gone bad? Everybody had one, didn’t they? So why would the gate attendant care about hers?
“I was preoccupied.”
The gate attendant made it clear that she didn’t care, and that all she wanted was to get Sloane on the plane and start focusing on the next group of passengers, already filing in to catch the next flight.
So, Sloane hustled herself through, took her seat in the third row of the first-class section, leaned her head back against the headrest and hoped people would assume her to be asleep and leave her alone. The way Carter had done the last few months of their relationship. She in one bedroom, he in the other. Barely talking when they met in the hall. Barely even acknowledging each other’s existence unless it was absolutely necessary.
With her eyes shut she could visualize everything. The apathy. The temper. The outrage. But most of all the pain. She could still feel it burrowing in, winding its corkscrew tentacles around every fiber of her being.
“Still no luck?” Gemma Hastings, Sloane’s surgical assistant, had asked, when she’d informed her people early that morning that she’d be gone for a couple of weeks.
“It’s done,” she’d told her. “I’ve hung on too long and too hard. It’s time to get myself sorted and start moving in a new direction.”
What that direction was, she didn’t know. But if she didn’t move in some other direction soon, she was afraid she might never move at all. Her friends, even her dad, had been telling her this was what she needed to do. So, after three months she was finally taking their advice. She was taking some me time to readjust.
As for loving Carter—tossing that away wouldn’t be as easy as stepping onto a plane and hiding out for a while. Still, what was the point in worrying about him when he didn’t worry about himself? Or worry about them?
That was the worst of it. He’d given up on them. And quite easily. But here she was, still hanging on. Why? Maybe her feelings for Carter were some sort of remnant, left over from the days when she’d first fallen in love with him, when he had been kind and good, and the best surgeon she’d ever seen. Maybe her love was nothing more than an old habit she didn’t know how to break.
Because she still loved him?
That was the question she didn’t want to answer, because the answer might scare her. Falling in love with one man, then watching him turn into someone else she didn’t even recognize had been tough. Trying to stay in love with the man he’d turned into